Our safety, comfort and peace of mind are heavily dependent upon our capability to prevent, predict or postpone the failure of components and structures on the basis of sound physical principles While the external loadings acting on a material or component are clearly important, There are other contributory factors including unfavourable materials microstructure, pre-existing defects and residual stresses Residual stresses can add to, or subtract from, the applied stresses and so when unexpected failure occurs it is often because residual stresses have combined critically with the applied stresses, or because together with the presence of undetected defects they have dangerously lowered the applied stress at which failure will occur Consequently it is important that the origins of residual stress are understood, opportunities for removing harmful or introducing beneficial residual stresses recognized, their evolution in-service predicted, their influence on failure processes understood and safe structural integrity assessments made, so as to either remove the part prior to failure, or to take corrective action to extend life This paper reviews the progress in these aspects in the light of the basic failure mechanisms

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Residual stress and its role in failure

The paper reviews published data which address the effect of machining (conventional and non-conventional processes) and the resulting workpiece surface topography/integrity on fatigue performance, for a variety of workpiece materials. The effect of post-machining surface treatments, such as shot peening, are also detailed. The influence of amplitude height parameters (Ra, Rt), amplitude distribution (Rsk) and shape (Rku) parameters, as well as spatial (Std, Sal) and hybrid (Ssc) measures, are considered.

There is some disagreement in the literature about the correlation between workpiece surface roughness and fatigue life. In most cases, it has been reported that lower roughness results in longer fatigue life, but that for roughness values in the range 2.5–5 μm Ra it is primarily dependent on workpiece residual stress and surface microstructure, rather than roughness. In the absence of residual stress, machined surface roughness in excess of 0.1 μm Ra has a strong influence on fatigue life. Temperatures above 400 °C reduce the effects of both residual stress and surface roughness on fatigue, due to stress relieving and the change in crack initiation from the surfaces to internal sites. The presence of inclusions an order of magnitude larger than the machined surface roughness generally overrides the effect of surface topography.

The effect of machined topography and integrity on fatigue life

Many manufacturing processes can induce residual stresses in components. These residual stresses influence the mean stress during cyclic loading and so can influence the fatigue life. However, the initial residual stresses induced during manufacturing may not remain stable during the fatigue life. This paper provides a broad and extensive literature survey addressing the stability of surface and near-surface residual stress fields during fatigue, including redistribution and relaxation due to static mechanical load, repeated cyclic loads, thermal exposure and crack extension. The implications of the initial and evolving residual stress state for fatigue behaviour and life prediction are addressed, with special attention to fatigue crack growth. This survey is not a critical analysis; no detailed attempt is made to evaluate the relative merits of the different explanations and models proposed, to propose new explanations or models or to provide quantitative conclusions. Primary attention is given to the residual stresses resulting from four major classes of manufacturing operations: shot peening and related surface treatments, cold expansion of holes, welding and machining.

Wyman Z.L. Zhuang

Papers

Investigation of residual stress relaxation under cyclic load

Nondestructive inspection of fatigue crack propagation beneath supersonic particle deposition coatings during fatigue testing